


Gordian

by Polly_Lynn



Series: The "Unnamed" Series [10]
Category: Castle
Genre: Angry Kissing, Angst, Awkward Romance, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're leaving behind Jordan Shaw and her war room. Jordan Shaw and her proclamations, and he's his old, ridiculous self and she's grateful. She's laughing and sniping and giddy underneath. She's grateful that he's driving the dialogue. That all she has to do is roll her eyes and pretend she's not smiling.  All she has to provide is the occasional jab they both know she doesn't really mean. She's grateful that something's finally easy, and that's thanks to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gordian

**Author's Note:**

> This is set at the end of Boom! It's one of the T-rated entries in this series.

He's himself. 

In the wake of everything terrifying and devastating and flat-out _exhausting_ about the last few days, he's nattering on about vehicle upgrades and worker's compensation for damage caused by the passenger seat of her Crown Vic. 

"You're not a worker, Castle." She rolls her eyes. Says her lines and fights against a smile, but not too hard. Feels more like _her_ self than she has any right to under the circumstances. 

" _Not-_ worker's compensation, then." He doesn't miss a beat. He leans past her like an eager child to stab at the down button before she can get to it. Gives her a triumphant grin when the doors ding open the second his finger hits home.  ”The point is . . ." 

She doesn't grasp the point, whatever it is. She lets him usher her into the elevator. She rests her head on the back wall and loses herself in the sound of his voice. She loses the sense of whatever nonsense he's talking about, because the _real_ point is they're getting the hell out of the precinct, finally. 

They're leaving behind Jordan Shaw and her war room. Jordan Shaw and her proclamations, and he's his old, ridiculous self and she's grateful. She's laughing and sniping and giddy underneath. She's _grateful_ that he's driving the dialogue. That all she has to do is roll her eyes and pretend she's not smiling.  All she has to provide is the occasional jab they both know she doesn't really mean. She's grateful that something's finally easy, and that's thanks to him. 

It lasts all the way to the curb. That gratitude. That spine-softening relief that things are back to normal. It lasts until she realizes he's not really himself. He's a strange, almost manic facsimile of himself. 

"Cab ok?" The question is beyond perfunctory. He's already hailing one. His arm is up and he's talking a mile a minute. “Too keyed up for the subway. You hungry?" 

His head swivels toward her, as if he's sorry he asked. Sorry he left any opening for her, but he might as well not have. She's dumbstruck. Horrified, because they haven't had this conversation. She hadn't even known there was a conversation to _have_ until two minutes ago, and now it's painfully obvious. Now she's completely tongue tied.

He isn't, though. He goes on again at speed. At length, as if he's made a vow to fend off silence at all costs. To fend off any answer she might give. 

"I'm not really. Hungry, that is. But if we went for a burger, it should be quiet on the home front by the time we get in." He falters. He gives her a sidelong glance and his lips tighten. His eyes cloud with recent memory. "I gave Mother and Alexis the highlights, but I'm guessing you'd rather not get into the play-by-play tonight . . ."

"I have a hotel," she blurts, and the air goes out of the world. Everything easy and right and familiar evaporates. 

“You have a what?” 

He's pulled a few steps ahead of her. He stops. She must have stopped already. There’s an open sidewalk square between them that says so. An immeasurable, uncrossable distance. He turns slowly toward her. She looks at her own feet in confusion, wondering why it is they're not moving. Wondering how it is they’re playing out this sudden drama at the mouth of some filthy alley. 

"A hotel.” She finds her voice somehow. She tamps down the uneasy feeling that’s hell bent on rising up in her and drags out the syllables, like it's a joke. Like she might explain what a hotel is and he might play along. “It’s all set up. I called while you were saying goodbye to all your new FBI friends . . ."

The tables turn. _She’s_ talking a mile a minute now. She’s playing at some version of normal, and it’s ghastly the way she overshoots. How hollow and false her voice sounds. She feels sick with fatigue. With the backwash of adrenaline and frustration. With him. With herself and Jordan Shaw and the man who killed not quite half a dozen people in her name. With the wide world she just wants to shut out for the foreseeable future. 

"That's ridiculous." He pivots away to scan the street. He raises his arm again, but the lights are dark on the few cabs rushing by. The world is going on without them. "You're not staying at a hotel."

"Yes, Castle. I am." She reaches up and closes her fingers around his wrist. She jerks his arm hard enough to make them both stumble. To leave them too close now and not ok at all, but she goes on. What choice does she have? "I have a hotel and I'm staying there until my insurance can set me up . . ." 

"Why?" he cuts in, his tone sharp enough to make her blink. He's angry. Suddenly, blazingly angry enough that she knows, in retrospect, that he's hasn't been himself at all. That his manic chatter has been a front the whole time, because he knows her.  _He_ knew this conversation was coming, and he's _furious_ about it. “Why would you stay at a hotel? You’re already settled. Your things are at the loft." 

"My _things?"_ She's furious, too. Angry about everything and nothing. Cringing with embarrassment that they're doing this on the street. They're barely even around the corner from the precinct, and she doesn't care at all, because how dare he assume? How fucking dare he try to bully her like this? "My drugstore underwear?" 

"Yes," he snarls. "Your drugstore underwear and your travel-sized everything and the god damned _beach towel_ you just had to buy."  His voice drops into the low, maddening register she hasn't heard in months. Not since the very beginning when it all felt like a game. "Tell me, Beckett, did you sleep on top of the duvet to keep the sheets clean?" 

He looks her up and down. Something hungry flares in his eyes. Something that makes him furious again, and she thinks he didn't mean her to see, but it's gone in an instant. His gaze goes flat and hard. 

"I hope you had the foresight." His voice drips with insincerity. With shocking cold. "God forbid you find yourself beholden to someone for a fucking load of laundry."

His mouth snaps shut as the words bounce off the nearby brick. He's startled by his own voice. The volume of it. _She's_ startled by that and more. By the venom that's not like him. By the prick of tears and the thick, unpleasant the feeling rising in her throat. 

"It's late," she says tonelessly. One word comes after another, and each is as much a surprise to her as to him. She didn't see this coming—any of this—and she knows now that should have. She knows now that _he_ did, and it's about more than a hotel room or a drugstore bag full of the only things she could think of. She shakes her head as if the movement might clear it. As if it can grant her the gift of hindsight. "I'm not doing this. I can't do this."

"Obviously." The anger goes out of him. The mania and the fury and . . . the light. The steady warmth that burns between them, even when she’s furious with him. Even when he’s frustrated beyond belief with her.  It goes, and he’s shuttered. Battened down so hard that she barely recognizes him. "Obviously," he says again, almost to himself this time. "A cab. You should still take a cab." 

He turns his back to her. He blinks at the street like it's unfamiliar. At the passing cars, as if he doesn't know how any of this goes. 

"I'm grateful," she says, trailing after him. Reaching out, even though she's still angry. Even though this still feels ridiculous, because of course she has a hotel. Of course she'd gotten one as soon as it was safe, and the last thing she should have to do right now is manage _his_ feelings. But she can't bear this blank-canvas version of him, so she reaches  out. "Of course I'm grateful, but I can't just _stay._ You know that."

"I don't." He rounds on her again. He knocks aside her hand in passing and closes the gap between them. It’s not at all what she had in mind. This sudden, unnerving proximity. ”I have no idea why you can't just stay, Beckett. So why don't you explain it to me?"

"Because there's no _reason_ for me to stay." She feels the blood drain from her face. Feels her throat go thick all over again when it drains from his. She didn't mean . . . "It's safe, Castle." She says it quickly. Tries to make it right. " _I'm_ safe and your family . . ." 

"This isn't about my family." He catches one of her wrists. "This is about you and me." 

"Castle . . ." She tries to twist away. Halfheartedly tries, but her limbs are rubbery with shock. With panic. _You and me._ They don’t talk about this. Not on the street. Not anywhere.

“You and me,” he says again. 

He catches her other wrist, and then his mouth is on hers. Then there's brick at her back, and whatever she was carrying or he was carrying thuds to the ground at their feet. There's a stumbling press of bodies, and she doesn't know who's pushing and who's pulling. If they're fighting or colluding.   

"Complicated." It's an epithet in his mouth. In hers when he deepens the kiss to drop it right inside. "This _thing_ with us." 

"You were listening?" She stiffens. Her head knocks against the brick wall and she flares hot. Her skin. Her insides. Everything. She's mortified. Pissed at him. Furious that it's Jordan Fucking Shaw to blame. Furious at the mess they've been in since long before Jordan Shaw. "Eavesdropping?"

He ignores her. Silences her with teeth and tongue and goes on as if she hasn’t said anything. 

”It’s fucking _not_ complicated." He jerks her hips into his own. He slides one hand to her breast, and the contact is electric. Familiar and like nothing she's ever felt before. Exactly like every time they haven't done this. " _This_ is not complicated.” 

 _Not complicated_ , he says, and he sounds like he actually means it. She’s incredulous. Outraged and so, _so_ willing to believe right now—so eager for it to be truth—that she has to laugh. She _means_ to laugh but her hands have found their way to bare skin just beneath the shirt tail she must've pulled free. Her hands have found their way to the warmth of his body just as his skim up her sides to tangle in her hair. Just as his thumbs trace the line of her jaw and the world turns sideways again. 

He pulls his mouth from hers. He tips her face toward the light, and when her eyes flick open, he's waiting. He meets her gaze, and what she sees takes her breath away. It’s not electricity this time. It's something patient and serious and achingly honest. He's still. Unflinching until he nods to himself, like he's satisfied that she's seen. Satisfied that he made her see. He dips his head. He lowers his mouth to hers, as gentle as he was rough half a minute ago. 

"This"—he kisses her softly–"is not complicated." He kisses her again. Leaves a faint, nervous-as-hell smile fluttering against her lips. A counterpoint to his heart pounding against his ribs. "It's _so_ not complicated, Kate." 

The words strike something deep in her. The kiss with all its gravity. Everything wells up in her. Everything she’s been putting off and tamping down and closing the door on, these last few days and long before that. 

It all wells up, as if the soft touch of his mouth calls it to the surface. Terror. Fascination. Weariness. Loss and the crushing weight of responsibility. Envy and its close cousin, jealousy, because he admires Jordan Shaw. Disappointment and uncertainty and an aching need for reassurance, because she’s spent two nights waiting for the doorknob to turn, and it never did. 

“Castle . . .” 

She doesn’t know what she’s about to say. Doesn’t know what she _can_ say or _ought_ to say in a moment like this, and the city steals whatever it might have been. 

A horn blares. A car backfires somewhere close. 

It startles them both. 

 _Startles._ It’s hardly the word. 

She feels the wave of heat hitting her bare skin. Feels the slam of the explosion against her eardrums. He flinches hard. Moves to shield her from the street and tightens his arms around her. She lets out a strangled cry and feels her heart hammering at her ribs. Their eyes meet. His are wide with stark, staring fear that just might be a mirror for her own. 

He looks away. Or she does, maybe. They’re both blushing. Embarrassed and unpleasantly unsteady with the spike of adrenaline. They’re both not ok. 

“Castle.” 

She has even less of an idea what she’ll say this time, but he rushes in.

“A hotel.” 

He takes a step back from her and smiles. It’s rigid and lopsided and makes her insides twist. He’s not himself, but damned if he isn’t trying for her sake. For his own, or maybe both. He takes another step back and turns toward the street. 

He lifts his hand, and she opens her mouth to tell him not to. She opens her mouth to tell him that she doesn’t want a fucking hotel. That she doesn't want to be alone. That she wants to go home with him, whether the doorknob turns or not. She opens her mouth, but it’s too late. There’s a cab squealing to a stop, and he’s lifting the back-door handle.  

“Thanks,” she mutters. She can’t think of anything else to say. Can’t think of anything to do but brush past him on her way into the cab.  

“It’s the chocolates, isn’t it?” He catches her hand. The very last part of her as it disappears into the back seat. “No little chocolates on your pillow.” He smiles at her. It’s pained, but something like normal. Something like him. “You could’ve asked.” 

“I should have,” she says. An impulse as her fingers close tight around his. “I should have asked.”  

_You could ask now_

The possibility hovers in the air, but the cabbie is impatient. The drivers trying to get around him on the narrow street are livid. The world's gone on without them, and his fingers slip from hers. 

"Thank you," he says. His brow furrows like it sounds as odd to him as it does to her. He makes an effort, though. Rouses himself and tries for a sly grin. He almost makes it. "We value your feedback." 

"Night, Castle," she says quietly. She's trying for normal.

She almost makes it, too. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As I get to the end of Season 2 in my gym re-watch, my mind continually tries to reconcile the build that starts with Sucker Punch, then lands us with Late Shaft and the whole Demming debacle. Unfortunately, I can sell it to myself that they'd run away from each other at speed after the intensity of that stretch of time. Messed up, pretty bebes that they are.


End file.
